Wampum

You'll want to read Josh's pieces from Thursday. Mughnieh: Liberator of Lebanon or Opportunistic Terrorist ?.

Mughnieh was born in 1962 in the southern Lebanese village of Teir Dibba. He grew up in Beirut's southern suburbs where as a teenager he joined Force 17, the elite unit of the Fatah faction headed by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

After Israeli forces expelled the Palestinians from Beirut during the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Mughnieh joined a group of Shiite Islamists then coalescing under Iran's guidance in the Bekaa Valley. The group became Hizbullah and Mughnieh, despite his youth, was considered one of its most capable figures.

In addition to the 1983 attacks in Beirut, in 1985 Mughnieh led the hijacking of a TWA airliner in Beirut in which a US Navy diver was killed. He is also alleged to have run the networks of kidnappers who snatched dozens of foreigners in Beirut in the mid- to late 1980s.

I'm not going to write about the deranged joy in the Israeli press, Pakistan and the pending 8th Majlis in Iran are much more important than the assassination of a general officer of an armed organization who has not had an operation role since Ronald Reagan was president. But this guy should have been teaching, like others before him, the operational art behind his successes in the early 1980s, at Leavenworth.

Of course, its a godsend for people like Olmert, and Bush, who are looking for cover and the joy of counter-fire as an excuse for follow-on forces.